The Voice Inside

35

Rudy listened to footsteps echoing on the marble floor of the San Francisco Opera building. The lobby felt like a palace, with rows of Doric columns and brass-and-crystal lanterns hanging from an inlaid gold ceiling. People came and went, mostly in business suits, and their conversations made a constant, hollow murmur that hung in the air. There was a performance of Rigoletto scheduled for the evening, and that meant a wave of activity in the hours before the show.

He’d been here once before. That was decades earlier, not long after he and Hope had been married. Someone had given them tickets to Bellini’s Norma. He didn’t even remember who it was. They’d been underdressed because they couldn’t afford opera finery. He remembered feeling out of place, and he’d sat through the opera in severe discomfort, feeling assaulted by the screeching voices in Italian. He’d assumed Hope would feel the same way, but when he looked at her at one point, he saw tears running down her face.

He’d never even asked her what it was that affected her so much. They didn’t talk about things like that.

It wasn’t a good memory.

Rudy found what he wanted near the entrance to the theater hall. A printed program. He stuffed it in his pocket and turned around and exited the building onto the stone steps leading down to Van Ness. Colorful opera banners flapped in the light breeze over his head. The sun was already low, and the temperature was dropping. He headed to the street corner and crossed to the other side, where he sat down on the cold ground with his back propped against a sculpture outside Symphony Hall. From where he was, he could see the main steps of the opera building and the porte cochere for vehicles on the cross street.

The late-afternoon traffic jammed the intersection in every direction. Commuters were heading home.

He took the program out of his pocket and flipped through the pages to the listing of administrative staff. There were more people than he expected. Accountants, system administrators, music librarians, school-program coordinators, communication managers, marketers, and dozens of other people working behind the stage. He went through the list name by name, and he finally found her.

Maria Lopes. She was their assistant director of annual giving. A fund-raiser asking for money.

He was in the right place.

It was Friday. Maria was probably working. And it was almost the end of the day, which meant she should be leaving soon.

Rudy leaned forward with his arms on his knees, looking like a San Francisco street person with nowhere to go. Behind his sunglasses, he studied everyone leaving the opera building. It wasn’t easy. Dozens of people left simultaneously, heading in different directions. Trucks and buses blocked his view. He was far enough away to see both sides of the building, but the distance made it hard to distinguish each face. As the minutes passed, it also got darker.

Maria didn’t show.

Lights came on around him. Headlights blinded him as the cars passed. His vantage became useless. Most of the people who looked like office staff had been leaving through the side entrance on Grove Street, so he took a chance that Maria would do the same. He got up and crossed the street and staked out a new position near the wall of the opera building. It was after six o’clock now. He only had a moment to study each face emerging through the glass doors before they passed out of the lights and were lost on the dark street.

Six thirty came and went.

Then seven o’clock.

He began to think he was wasting his time. Either he’d missed Maria or she wasn’t at work. Then, through the nearest doors ten feet away, he spotted a profile that had a familiar cast. It had been four years, so he wasn’t sure, and the hair was much shorter than he remembered. The woman reached the sidewalk and headed away from him; she’d disappear soon. He had to make a choice. Stay or go.

Rudy followed her.

He remained half a block back, tracking her in and out of the crowd of pedestrians. The height was right. The walk was right. It might be Maria, but he couldn’t risk getting close enough to confirm it. She wore a leather jacket down to her ankles, and her shoulder-length hair was tucked under a purple beret. She led him directly east toward Market Street, and he guessed that she was heading for the BART station to catch a train. He was right.

He was ten people behind her on the crowded escalator leading underground. The BART station was a dangerous place for him. There were cameras everywhere. He had to buy a ticket, using cash, and by the time he did, the woman had disappeared. He waded back into the mass of people, and he spotted what looked like a purple beret among the bobbing heads. He forced his way through the push-and-shove of the crowd, and he found her again, on the platform for the Millbrae line heading south.

The woman momentarily turned his way, checking the departure monitors for the next train. He hid his face before she could see him, but he recognized her.

It was Maria Lopes.

Four years had changed her. He saw someone who was older, more serious, more mature. The free spirit on the tour bus had responsibilities now. But that was to be expected. Wren would have been the same, all these years later.

It was cool down below near the train tunnels. Rudy waited, watching the crowd gather, keeping an eye on Maria. Five minutes later, with a roar and a gust of wind, a train surged into the station. It was standing-room only. Maria was among the people pushing shoulder to shoulder to find space inside, and Rudy let himself get a little closer behind her. There were only three people between them inside the packed train car. If she’d peered back between the strangers, she would have seen his face, but she didn’t. She had headphones in her ears. She read her phone, head down. She was oblivious to the world.

The train left the Civic Center station. He held on to a shoulder strap as the car jostled. Throughout the downtown stops, more people got on than got off, squeezing the crowd closer together. Soon, Maria was so near he could have reached out to touch her. If he’d pursed his lips and exhaled, she would have felt the warmth of his breath on the back of her neck. Even when he’d stalked her four years earlier, he’d never been this close. And yet she was unaware.

They headed out of the city together. Maria didn’t live in San Francisco now. Going south, the train stopped in Daly City. Then Colma. Then South San Francisco. As the crowd thinned, he drifted to the far back of the car, putting more people between them. He found a seat; so did Maria. There were only two stops left: San Bruno and Millbrae.

As they neared the San Bruno station, Maria slid her headphones out of her ears and secured them in her purse, along with her phone. The train pulled in, and she got up, not looking behind her, and headed out onto the platform. She walked toward the tall escalators. Rudy followed, letting the distance between them increase. There was nowhere for her to go.

Maria emerged into the night outside the station. The bay was less than a mile away, sending a cold breeze off the water. The dark hills loomed to the west. She walked briskly toward the multilevel parking garage, with the look of someone who did this every day. Her leather jacket swished; her heels tapped. She tugged the beret down on her head.

Rudy noticed a police station immediately adjacent to the garage, but there were no cops outside. He lagged behind her, watching the way in and the way out of the garage. She reached the elevators and got inside, and when the doors closed, he ran, taking the steps and jogging up to the next floor. The elevator got there just as he did, and he hung back. Maria walked down the middle of the garage aisle, and he spied her from a distance as she climbed inside a Chevy sedan. She backed out and headed down the ramp.

She was gone.

Rudy turned around and went back down the steps.

He considered his options as he returned to the station. The garage was a possibility. If he took her there, he’d have her car in which to go somewhere more private. But the garage also had cameras, and BART riders came and went with every ding of the elevator doors. There was also the threat of cops at the nearby police station. It was a risk. And the weekend was already here, so Maria wouldn’t be heading back to the garage until Monday. Two days was a lifetime for him now.

He had to find out where Maria lived, and he had to be ready to move fast.

As he waited on the cold platform for the next northbound train, with only a handful of other people heading into the city, Rudy heard his phone ringing in his pocket. The only person who had that number was Phil. He walked to the far end of the station where he was alone, and then he answered the phone.

“What’s up?”

“Hey,” his brother replied. Phil knew better than to use names; somewhere, the government was always listening. “That person you told me to keep an eye on? I’m on the case.”

“Where?”

“A restaurant near the Ferry Building.”

“Alone?”

“No. Looks like a family dinner. What do you want me to do?”

“Just keep watching,” Rudy said. “And keep me posted.”